Simon Kennedy (Cook, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister to the Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Hansard source

The coalition supports this bill, the Treasury Laws Amendment (Fuel Excise Relief) Bill, because Australians need immediate relief and they need it now. Families and small businesses right across Australia and in the electorate of Cook are under real pressure. My office is getting emails about people struggling with the cost of living, struggling with fuel bills and being unable to make ends meet and get by.

Just this week I heard from the St Vincent de Paul Society telling stories about people in my electorate—mums forgoing lunches for their children, having to ask the St Vincent de Paul Society for help to provide their kids with lunch, asking them for help to put beds in people's houses because they're sleeping with blankets on the floor, asking them to help with the weekly groceries and asking them to help with fuel vouchers. These are real stories not in impoverished parts of Australia but in the Sutherland shire of Sydney, a well-to-do, reasonably affluent area. Yes, there are people doing it extremely tough there, and if they're doing it tough there I can only begin to imagine how tough they are doing it in the rest of Australia.

We support this because it will deliver relief for households. It's coming at a critical time ahead of Easter, where families looking to go away for road trips and school holidays are wondering how they're going to pay for those school holiday and Easter activities. Budgets are stretched for small businesses and tradies. Transport operators who I have spoken to as recently as last week were parking their trucks because they couldn't afford to make a loss or their businesses would go under. These transport operators may now be able to service their customers and get goods moving. We were facing, potentially, shortages at customer shelves in supermarkets and hardware stores.

How did this come about? Well, it was because of coalition leadership. It was over a week ago that we first called for a cut to fuel excise and road user charging. And, yes, it was pleasing to see the Albanese government listen to the coalition and listen to Australians to support them through the difficulties they were having. This government is just waking up to the fact that energy is the economy. We've seen it with electricity markets and how it's been hurting manufacturing, we've seen it in gas markets and how it's been hurting industry, and now we're seeing it in oil and fuel markets and how it's grinding Australia to a halt.

The issue Australia has had with this is prior to the Iran shock. Prior to any of this becoming an issue, Australia had the highest inflation of any advanced economy in the world. Australia was worse than the US, worse than anywhere in Europe and worse than in Asia. What is the responsibility of a federal government at a time like this? It's to shelter the businesses. It's to shelter the citizens. But, instead, Jim Chalmers and his reckless spending had Australia with the highest inflation—

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